The Daily Check In for Thursday December 25th - just for today, we are not drinking!
rosamundi
Velocipedestrienne, flâneuse, solivagant, bibliophile, needlesmith. Swans. Cricket.
The Daily Check In for Wednesday December 24th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Tuesday December 23rd - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Monday December 22nd - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Sunday December 21st - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Saturday December 20th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Friday December 19th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Thursday December 18th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Wednesday December 17th - just for today, we are not drinking!
Welcome, we’re glad to have you here 🙂
I’m a great believer for having a plan for difficult days, so what’s your plan? Who knows you aren’t drinking? I found it was easier not to drink if people knew in advance.
Can you make sure there’ll be nice non-alcoholic drinks (take your own, if necessary)?
Are you prepared to leave if it gets hard? I was dreading my first work Christmas party after I stopped. I wasn’t sure what AF drinks options there would be, and forced socialisation with people I wouldn’t choose to socialise with is not my forte. So I told myself I could stay until I’d eaten and then I could bugger off.
My top tips for surviving parties:
-
Get there under your own steam (bonus points if it’s by a method you can’t drink with, e.g. driving or cycling).
-
Don’t offer lifts to anyone, that way you can leave on your own timetable, not theirs. If you have a partner, get them onside so they will leave if you say “honey we need to go now.”
-
Set yourself a curfew (leave after you’ve eaten, for example). You can stay later if you find you’re having fun, but having that “I only have to stick it out until then,” at the back of your mind is really helpful.
-
Get an alcohol-free drink in your hand as soon as you arrive, mentally setting your “tone” for the event. If you’re worried there won’t be anything AF, or the AF options will be childish (I never drank Coke when I was a child, why are you offering it as the only option to a grown adult?), take your own.
-
If your partner isn’t present, have them on standby to send you an emergency “get home now, [insert plausible but not overly dramatic excuse here, no deaths or explosions or you’ll be dealing with concerned enquiries for days]” message. If you don’t have a partner, or helpful friend, reach out to someone here, I can make up “the dog’s got diarrhoea/the kids have just started vomiting, please can you get home?” excuses with the best of them.
-
Take time to check in on yourself somewhere quiet, every hour or so. Do some box breathing (in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four), and just recombobulate yourself.
-
Don’t tangle yourself up in long goodbyes, just slip away, like a little ghost. 👻 You can always send the host a thank you message the next day “sorry I left without saying goodbye, but you were too busy being fabulous and I didn’t want to interrupt, I had a great time, thank you!”
-
Remember it’s a Christmas party, not a hostage situation. You can just leave.
The Daily Check In for Tuesday December 16th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Monday December 15th - just for today, we are not drinking!
You stopped drinking three years ago but you want to stop drinking? Which is it?
I personally wouldn’t hang out with people who were drinking, because I find navigating drunk conversation gets kind of boring after a while, I would hang out with people who model the behaviour I want to display. This means I tend to hang out in spaces that talk about reading, sewing, crochet, or long-distance walking, spaces where neither alcohol or not drinking are the subject. if people do start talking about sewing and drinking, I drop out of that part of the conversation.
Not really sure why you’ve posted this, as it doesn’t seem to fit in with the spirit and ethos of the board, I’d be grateful if you could explain.
The Daily Check In for Sunday December 14th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Saturday December 13th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Friday December 12th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Thursday December 11th - just for today, we are not drinking!
The Daily Check In for Wednesday December 10th - just for today, we are not drinking!
One thing I will add is that when I stopped, I initially found it very difficult to be around people who were drinking. It’s hard to hold a conversation when you’re sober and they aren’t, which is kind of boring for the sober person. Depending on who I was with, I was on edge about whether they’d forget I wasn’t drinking and offer me something.
Could you and your family commit to not drinking while he’s staying with you?
There’s various pinned posts on here that offer help and advice, it might be worth having a read through those.
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst